Wednesday, May 20, 2009

CIMT, Videos and Update




Well, we are one day away from Leah having the cast on for a week! Yay, we made it a week! Tomorrow, the cast will come off, we will uni-valve it, wash Leah's arm (WOO HOO!) and put a new cast on! We'll see how Leah does with the saw, should be interesting. I'm looking forward to a new non-smelly cast. We have been playing at the park everyday and Leah has certainly been sweating, so the cast is not pretty. Bath time has been hard, Leah wants to play and we want to make sure the cast doesn't get wet.
Other then bath our biggest challenge is eating. Leah is working so hard on her grasp and she just doesn't have it yet. Which makes eating challenging for her. She does well holding something, and tries to bring it to her mouth. Therapy has been great. Leah had an extra OT session on Monday where her therapist, Lisa, was super impressed. We also had our regularly scheduled OT session today. Lisa, was even more impressed and said she saw total improvements from Monday! Leah's focus is incredible. She is trying so hard to get things done. She does well with only a bit of assistance. You can really see how determined she is in her face. I am so unbelievably proud.

Here are some short videos of OT, then a cute video of Leah being Leah!



You can see in this video the pieces for the toy were a bit too big for Leah to hold. Leah gets easily frustrated when she can't do something right away, that's why she says "all done". Although, her movements were focused with just a little help from Lisa...Leah did a great job of turning the handle, which is annoyingly on the wrong side!


Leah did great closing this toy...she had some trouble opening it, but eventually did it herself! Yay!


The play-doh is very motivating for Leah (most of the time). She was too funny looking in the cup! She was able to grab the play-doh to play with it! It was great!



My favorite thing that Leah is doing thus far, is really using her left hand to do things! She now blows kisses with that hand, but struggles with supination. She will also give you a high five with lefty! It's great because just last week NONE of this was happening. She has gained SO MUCH awareness already. We are looking forward to seeing how she progresses in the next couple weeks! I'm thrilled already with the things she is doing! And as you can see in the video, the cast does not stop her!

3 comments:

Popcorn House said...

That is so great you are already seeing such great results! Good luck getting the new cast! The saw is kind of scary!

mandy said...

Wow Amanda! She looks great! It has been two days since we put the bivalve cast on Andrew and he HATES it! He is haveing a very hard time and of course so am I. But I am very encouraged seeing Leah and how well she is doing! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

She looks great! Thanks for the videos!

Barbara